As one senior wide receiver walked out the door, another one decided to stay at Notre Dame.
Braden Lenzy announced Sunday night on Twitter that he'll be back with the Irish for a fifth season. The tweet came shortly after Kevin Austin Jr. shared his declaration for the 2022 NFL Draft.
The 5-foot-11, 182-pound Lenzy played in a full season for the first time as a senior. In 13 games, Lenzy caught 32 passes for 350 yards and three touchdowns. His 32 receptions finished fourth on the team behind tight end Michael Mayer (71), Austin (48) and NFL-bound running back Kyren Williams (42). The speedy Lenzy also rushed five times for 69 yards.
Lenzy led Notre Dame with 15 targets in Saturday's 37-35 Fiesta Bowl loss to Oklahoma State. But he only turned that into seven catches for 60 yards. A few of the targets Lenzy couldn't catch were deep throws in which quarterback Jack Coan threw off the mark.
Lenzy, a former four-star recruit out of Portland (Ore.) Tigard, became the first of Notre Dame's upperclassmen wide receivers to announce his intentions for the 2022 season. Graduate senior Avery Davis and senior Joe Wilkins Jr., both of whom suffered season-ending knee injuries in 2021, could return to Notre Dame.
Four other wide receivers are currently projected to be on Notre Dame's 2022 roster: sophomores-to-be Lorenzo Styles, Deion Colzie and Jayden Thomas and incoming freshman Tobias Merriweather, a four-star recruit.
Styles played in all 13 games as a freshman with 24 catches for 344 yards and one touchdown. That touchdown, 136 of those yards and eight of those catches came in Saturday's Fiesta Bowl. Colzie played in 11 games with only four catches for 67 yards. Thomas qualified for a redshirt season by playing in three games and not recording a catch.